


From Russia, With Love

by imunbreakabledude



Series: Thirst-verse [4]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming of Age, F/F, Vampires, blood stuff (bc of the vampires), it's a thirstverse flashback my friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25413697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imunbreakabledude/pseuds/imunbreakabledude
Summary: How freshly bitten prison escapee Oksana became the elusive Demon With No Face, Villanelle: a vampire coming-of age-story in three acts.
Relationships: Anna Leonova/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Nadia Kadomtseva/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Series: Thirst-verse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620313
Comments: 28
Kudos: 110





	From Russia, With Love

**Author's Note:**

> Hi vamp fans! Here's a little something to tide you over until the final installment of the Thirst-verse!
> 
> If you are new here and have no idea what I'm talking about, this is part of an ongoing [series.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620313) If you are into a vampire AU with action, laughs, romance, and lots and lots of villaneve, then start at the beginning with [Thirst.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167241)

——I——

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“Quit complaining.”

“Two people every night? It’s too much, Oksana.”

“Didn’t bother you back when you shanked a man and got sent to prison.”

“It’s different when it’s for _him_.”

Oksana had no retort for that. For though she was sick of Nadia’s whining, she didn’t disagree with that last point.

“It’s part of the deal.” Oksana stooped down to the forest floor and began sweeping pine needles into a pile, then sat down on the makeshift cushion. “He broke us out of that prison, and gave us the gift. We can fetch dinner for him every night.”

“Forever?”

The word hung in the air like a spider suspended on silk. 

Whatever Nadia saw in Oksana’s face must have concerned her, for she screwed up her mouth in a pout and began pacing in circles.

“What is it now?”

“Nothing,” Nadia said.

“Are you worried he will have us clipping his toenails?”

Nadia ceased her pacing abruptly and blurted, “I love you, Oksana.”

That was unexpected.

“Thank you.” Oksana shrugged.

“Do you–“ Nadia stopped herself, mid-sentence. “No. It’s alright if you don’t. Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but it’s how I feel.”

“Alright.”

“It is alright.” In repeating this, Nadia seemed to make peace with herself. Then, like the winds changing, the scrunched face returned. “Only… why haven’t we…”

Oksana nodded for her to go on.

“For ages…” Nadia tripped over the words. “We haven’t…”

“Had sex?”

“Hardly at all.” Nadia looked down at the ground. “Is it because… was it only a prison thing?”

“No.” 

“Then what?”

Oksana thought for a moment, until something she hadn’t yet fully put to words herself crystallized in her mind. “I don’t like vampires.”

Nadia started back at her, dumbfounded. She opened her mouth, like she wanted to argue, then closed it again. Birds chirped, seizing their chance to join the conversation.

“It’s almost dawn. Come to bed.” Oksana beckoned, until Nadia relented and crawled into the little hollow Oksana had formed in the crux of a safe, shady knot of trees. Nadia curled up and laid her head against Oksana’s chest. Oksana pulled her close. Arms around her.

Nadia did come close to the truth when she accused Oksana of only wanting her when they were stuck in prison. There weren’t many options to choose from, and Nadia was the best the place had to offer. Even as her head filled with dreams of the woman she’d rather be holding – even as she composed letters to Anna from her cell – she held onto Nadia, because beggars can’t be choosers. No reason not to make use of what was in front of her.

But Oksana never liked to settle. 

“Do you ever think about leaving?” Nadia whispers.

“Leaving?”

“We don’t need him anymore. We have each other. We could go, right before dawn. Run far away from him. Make our own life.”

“Keep dreaming.”

“I’m not dreaming.”

“Let’s talk about it more tomorrow.”

A few soft whimpers and snuffles. Nadia always made these noises as she fell asleep. She had as a human, too, and despite the changes in biology both of them experienced thanks to Vladimir sucking out their human blood and replacing it with his vampiric blood, the annoying habit persisted. Oksana rubbed Nadia’s back gently, and kissed her on the head. It wasn’t the same as with Anna, or even as with Nadia’s old human self, but it was better than nothing.

Soon, the noises stopped as Nadia fell asleep, but Oksana remained awake, thoughts buzzing. 

Sleep was one of many former necessities that took on a new meaning for Oksana in her new life. Before, she was beholden by her human frame to exit consciousness for around a third of her time on Earth, or, if she failed to meet this quota, suffer physical consequences. But her new body was stronger, and she discovered she only needed a fraction of the rest she used to. Two or three hours a day was plenty.

Day was the only time she had without Vladimir around giving orders, or as he preferred to call them, “lessons” in vampirehood, delivered with a degree of pomposity that made Oksana gag. Admittedly, there was a lot to learn: how to choose victims wisely to avoid attracting attention from other humans, which, while not always dangerous, was tedious to shake. How to separate her chosen prey from the pack. Where to bite for easiest feeding – not always the neck. How to properly shelter from the sun when living outdoors. And so on.

 _It’s still best to sleep through the daylight,_ Vladimir told them in his self-aggrandizing tone. _What else are you going to do when the sun’s out?_ He insisted that most vampires kept a human-like sleep schedule, though with a reversed circadian rhythm; that it was a mental comfort if not a physical need, and that _you girls will understand someday._

Oksana had another suspicion, that Vladimir wanted them asleep and out of his hair. Asleep and accounted for. So they wouldn’t learn on their own, learn from the world rather than from him. So, Oksana didn’t sleep much. She held Nadia in her arms and she thought. 

She thought about that word. _Forever._

Forever was the life sentence the judge gave her for killing Max Leonov. Forever was the walls of her prison cell, gray and unbroken and unending. 

Forever shouldn’t be lying in the woods with a substitute lover listening to a man who freed her only on the basis of obtaining a dutiful minion.

Oksana glanced down at Nadia. She was curled up, head limp against Oksana’s body. Thoroughly unconscious. It was hard to tell sometimes, with vampires. No heartbeat to slow down with sleep meant it was possible to fake very convincingly. But Oksana knew Nadia well enough to recognize the almost total cessation of breath as a sign she was truly asleep.

In hindsight, she probably should not have invited Nadia to cuddle, tonight.

Slowly, slowly, so as not to stir any of Nadia’s senses and wake her, Oksana extricated herself. She had to move so gradually, confirm after each millimeter that Nadia’s breathing did not change. All told, the process took nearly five minutes for her to free herself and prop Nadia’s curled form up against the tree trunk, rather than Oksana’s body.

Too long she had let others direct her life. Parents. State agents. Teachers. Officers. A judge that handed down a life sentence. Vladimir who replaced this with an undeath sentence.

It was high time to choose her own forever.

  
Her first priority was distance, so she ran without particular direction. It wasn’t about covering her tracks, for Vladimir and Nadia would be able to follow her scent easily enough, but simply getting far enough that they wouldn’t be bothered to try tracking her down. So she ran, kilometer after kilometer. 

Oksana hated running as a human. She still exercised, of course, for its practical benefits, but hated every second. Running as a vampire was exhilarating. No soreness, no lactic acid buildup, no ragged pain as her lungs struggled to take in enough oxygen. And the speed! The speed was something else.

Trees whipped by as she sprinted through the woods, avoiding patches of sunlight that peeked through the branches. In her haste, she stumbled once or twice. By the time she stopped to asses her location, her skin was dappled with pink patches where she’d caught stray sunbeams. She poked at the burns and winced. A good reminder of exactly how much sunlight she could handle.

Their travels with Vladimir took them through the Russian wilderness. Oksana hadn’t paid much attention to their geography relative to human cities, so she did not know where she was, exactly, but once the sun set, she let her nose guide her in the direction of civilization. The smell of gas, smog, cars, humans.

Once she found a road, it didn’t take long to run alongside it back to familiar territory. Back to Moscow. Perfect.

She stopped in an alley on the outskirts of the city to snatch a meal. Then, time for a homecoming she’d anticipated for years, though never under these circumstances.

As she rounded the corner to walk down a very familiar street, she recalled what Vladimir taught her and Nadia about invitations.

_Private homes. Ancient magic or curse or who-knows-what stops us unless the human invites us. Public buildings are fine. But any private dwelling – you need something. Doesn’t have to be ‘come in’, but… read between the lines, you’ll learn the signals. When you really need to get in, it isn’t hard._

Oksana found she was able to walk into the stairwell of the apartment building easily enough. She made her way up the stairs to the very familiar door, and knocked. She waited a minute or so. Anna was probably in bed, at this hour, though not asleep; probably reading by lamplight. She tuned her ears to the apartment, heard the sound of shuffling footsteps.

When it opened, Oksana wasn’t sure who was more surprised to see whom.

“Oksana.”

Anna looked the same as ever, as in, she was physically unchanged, but to Oksana’s new eyes, it was like seeing her for the first time. Her hair, thick and voluminous, even longer than before, as though she hadn’t cut it once since Oksana last saw her. Her brown eyes, constantly alight with curiosity and suspicion. Her soft skin, which seemed to radiate pure vitality.

Anna pulled her robe closed tighter, shifting under Oksana’s hungry gaze.

“May I come in?”

“You’re dead,” Anna whispered. “They told me you died.”

“Only for a little while.”

Anna blinked, confused. “You look the same.”

“Are you going to make me stand out in the hallway all night?”

Anna stepped aside, clearing the way. She said nothing, but the intent of the motion was like a shot of pheromones. A primal signal deep in the recesses of Oksana’s new brain said: _you may proceed_.

They sat around the kitchen table, like they used to when Anna would drill her on French verbs. The apartment looked the same as Oksana remembered it, hardly a cushion out of place, though larger. No husband to fill it. A widow’s home.

“How can this be? That you are here… alive?”

“I told you I would come back to you.”

Anna’s face darkened, with fear? No – concern. “Your face…” Anna reached out and touched one of the shiny burnt patches where the sun licked Oksana’s skin. As soon as her fingertips touched Oksana’s cheek, she recoiled, and gasped. “So cold.”

At the same time, Oksana was thinking the opposite. Anna’s fingers felt like fire on her skin. Here she was, so warm, so alive. The same state Oksana had left her in, though the gap between them remained wider than ever.

“I’ve changed,” Oksana said. “I’m the same, only… different.”

Anna shook her head slightly. “Let me get something for your skin.”

Anna went over to the cabinet and busied herself looking for some first aid supplies, which would be entirely unnecessary.

“I thought of you every night. Did you think of me?”

“Yes.” Anna shut one of the draws with a _thunk_ , and began rifling in another.

“Why didn’t you respond to my letters?”

Anna whipped around, now pointing a gun at Oksana.

“Oh, hello,” Oksana said.

“You killed Maxi.” Anna clutched the pistol tightly in both hands, pointing dead ahead.

“I did it for you.” Oksana said slowly. “For us.”

Tears began to well in Anna’s eyes. “Every night, I dreamed that you might come back so I could shoot your black heart.”

Oksana sighed. “If it will make you feel better, go ahead.”

“What?”

Oksana walked over to Anna. She took the pistol and placed the nose of the gun right against her forehead. “It won’t work. You’d need something of wood.”

Anna did not pull the trigger, but her voice trembled as much as her hands. “What are you?”

“I told you. I’ve changed.”

Oksana took Anna’s hand and placed it on her chest, over her heart. She watched Anna’s face as she registered. The cold. No beating. No pulse of life.

“It’s not possible.”

“It is.”

“So you have come to kill me, too?”

“Kill you? I have come to save you.”

Oksana took Anna in her arms. Breathed in her scent. Every detail of Anna’s being was magnified now, and every detail was ten thousand times better than what she remembered.

“I love you. When we were together, things always got in the way. There was never a place, never time – but now I have the power. We can have forever.”

“Forever?”

“Like the good days again. I’m yours, and you’re mine, _Anyuta_.”

Anna tried to push her away. “I can’t…”

Oksana held her tight. “You can. All it takes is two steps.”

Anna trembled, but put up little resistance as Oksana took her into the bedroom. Such a familiar series of actions… but to a different end, this time. 

It took all of Oksana’s strength not to fall upon Anna right then and there. Not like that – she could never see Anna as a meal, as livestock, like the rest of them, not in a million lifetimes. Oksana longed to have Anna like she did so many times before, in this very bed. Anna was alive. Her heart beat. Her pulse pumped. Her cheeks had color. Her skin radiated warmth. Nadia was a poor substitute for Anna, even back in prison, but no cold, dead body could ever hold a candle to this.

Oksana hesitated. If Anna changed, if she were no longer warm, alive….

But she pushed her doubt away. Only one word mattered. _Forever_. The change was the key to her new forever.

A choked scream escaped Anna’s lips. Oksana froze, and instinctively clutched her closer. _I’ll protect you,_ her grip said, before she understood what caused Anna to cry out in fear.

In the mirror over the vanity, Anna caught her reflection. Her alone. Oksana was nowhere to be seen, of course. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she pointed at the glass.

“I knew it,” she said. “This is a dream. A nightmare. Like I’ve had before. But never like this…”

“I promise you will never have nightmares like that again.” Oksana took Anna’s hand, kissed it gently, but held on. She recalled what Vladimir had told her – important to think about the placement of the scar. He had made the incision on her arm, small and inconspicuous, and he said that neck bites were largely out of fashion. But Oksana couldn’t resist the urge to leave a more personal mark on Anna, even if not on the neck.

She took Anna’s hand to her mouth and bit. Anna cried out – a more painful spot for a bite, to be sure, and for a moment Oksana regretted the choice. But Anna would feel pain during the process regardless; it was unavoidable. But once it was through, she’d feel so much better. So much stronger. Just like Oksana. It was worth it. She pressed her lips to the bite and began to drink.

Unmatched. No human she had tasted held a candle to Anna’s blood as it hit her tongue, nor would another for several years. As the warmth filled her mouth, Oksana nearly forgot herself, nearly succumbed to the pleasure of it.

But she remembered what was at stake. _Forever_. It took tremendous effort, but she pried her mouth away just as Anna’s skin began to look dangerously pallid.

She took a kitchen knife and made another small slice in her own arm, near her scar. She squeezed so her blood bubbled out, then put the cut before Anna. Anna didn’t move.

“It’s your turn now. Drink.”

Anna remained still. Her eyes were half-shut, unfocused.

“Come on. I know it’s hard. You can do it.” She lifted Anna’s head, pressed her arm right to Anna’s lips. She remembered how sleepy she felt after Vladimir drank most of her blood.

Anna’s lips moved, but not to drink. She was trying to say something.

“What is it?”

“I can’t.”

“You can. Drink now!”

“Please,” Anna murmured, so quiet, it even strained Oksana’s vampire hearing. “Oksana. Let me go.”

“You can’t go! You’re mine!”

But no more words came from Anna’s lips.

Anna said she was having a nightmare, but she was wrong. It was truly Oksana’s nightmare.

Oksana took Anna in her arms and sprinted to the hospital. She didn’t care if anyone saw her flitting through the night; she had to get there as fast as possible. She made it in ninety seconds. It was another two minutes of screaming at the nurses in the emergency room before they got Anna in a bed, with a doctor to see her.

But it was too late.

——II——

“Miss. You’re bleeding.”

Oksana ignored the nurse trying to get her attention. For the first time she registered the setting around her. The fluorescent lights of the hospital were far too bright. The mingling scents of festering wounds and sterilizing alcohol burned her nose and gave her a headache. Paying no mind to the confused staff begging her to fill out paperwork, she turned on a dime and marched out of the hospital into the night. 

The small cut on her arm was already slowing from a stream of blood to a trickle. Already her body was closing the wound. Superior healing to salvage the precious blood. Blood that she hunted for. Blood that she took from others to fuel her forever.

Blood that she took from Anna.

Once she cleared the hospital doors, she was off into the night. Sprinting for the woods again. Going for distance.

She made it about five kilometers into the forest before tripping on a root and stumbling to her hands and knees. Tripping was not something that happened to vampires. She saw the root. She could have stepped over it. But she didn’t.

Her hands hit the forest floor and she screamed at the ground. Her stomach churned. She started to retch. Crawled over to the closest tree and licked the bark. Trying to scrape the taste of Anna’s blood from her tongue. She longed to expunge the tainted blood from her body, though she knew it was useless. 

_Why didn’t she drink?_

This was unfathomable to Oksana. Immortality was right there. Eternal love was on her lips, free for the taking, but Anna chose death.

She roared and punched the tree trunk. Her fist went clean through the meter-thick trunk. Some lucky squirrel would surely stumble upon it and make it a fine home.

Then she fell to the ground once more. Her face grew wet. Tears fell off her cheeks, leaving wet spots on the ground, though she didn’t remember when she started crying.

“What do we have here? A little baby alone in the woods?”

Oksana stiffened. The voice was far too close, and she hadn’t heard any approach. Humans always made such noise when they moved, so…

She looked up at the figure that stopped in front of her. An old woman – scratch that, an old vampire, for she must have been a vampire to have approached so silently. She had chin-length gray hair, and a smug expression, and wore a muddy sweatsuit that said Dasha in worn embroidery. “What’s wrong, little baby? You don’t like drinking blood? It puts a bad taste in your mouth?”

Oksana later learned this type of comment is typical of Dasha.

Dasha found Oksana’s origin story rather amusing, when Oksana recounted it the next night as they sauntered through the woods together.

“With humans, they say women are obsessed with childbirth. With vampires, it is the men,” Dasha said, with such authority that must have come from lived experience.

Yes, Dasha laughed at every detail Oksana shared about Vladimir, and her laughter demonstrated how much more she knew than him. She never shared how old she was, but from the stories she told, Oksana estimated Dasha had been walking the nights for at least fifty or sixty years – or she was an incredible liar. 

Dasha knew everything when it came to life as an immortal creature of the night, and for whatever reason, didn’t mind keeping Oksana around and letting her observe. Oksana speculated on Dasha’s motives often, for she was a rather abrasive personality, and certainly not hanging out with Oksana out of the kindness of her heart. Eventually, Oksana guessed that Dasha wanted company, and so accepted it in the form of a young, solitary vampire she stumbled across. _Loneliness_ didn’t seem like the proper word to describe Dasha’s state. Perhaps _boredom_ was more accurate. Either way, she wanted a break from solitude, and Oksana wanted knowledge, so they tolerated each other’s presence.

Sometimes, Oksana suspected that Dasha just wanted another vampire around to listen to her rants. Dasha never ran out of subjects to rant about. One of her favorites, a recurring theme, was their very state of being as undead.

Dasha also liked to fight while she ranted. 

“The most frightening moment for humans is when they realize their mortality.” Dasha punctuated this statement by launching a kick that caught Oksana in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. “To comprehend their existence will end and they cannot escape death. If they think about it too hard, inescapable panic. They have to push it down just to go about the day.”

While she regrouped for a counterattack, Oksana remembered the moment when she first understood death. She was a precocious child; she got it by the time she was six years old. 

_She was playing outside and found an animal on the side of the road. Its fur was matted and bloody. Its stomach was torn open and a pile of parts Oksana had never seen before spilled out. It was a dog, but also not a dog. She went closer. Flies buzzed around it and it smelled evil. She reached out her tiny hand and poked it in the side. It heaved and wheezed at her touch. Now, she was close enough to see the dent in its side; she connected this with the bloody smear on the road. Hit by a car. She knew cars were dangerous because of the way her mother scooped her out of the way whenever one zoomed by._

_The dog lay on its side and didn’t move, except for its tongue lolling out of its mouth. Oksana poked it again. Then shoved it, harder. It made a funny squeaking sound. She picked up a stick off the ground and prodded at the pile of red stuff coming out of its belly. It was wet and squishy and not like anything Oksana had ever seen before. A little like the raw meat her parents cooked for dinner, but lumpier, shinier. She continued to explore this treasure trove of information._

_After a while she looked back at the dog’s face. Its tongue no longer panted, but lay limp. Its eyes were the same shiny black, yet duller. No more microscopic shifts. It wasn’t a dog anymore. It was a pile of parts._

_Oksana poked her own belly. Did she have weird parts inside too?_

_No one ever explained death to her, but she knew. She knew since she was six years old._

“We don’t have to deal with death anymore,” Oksana said as she tackled Dasha, pinning her against a thick tree.

“No.” Dasha said. “Humans have to realize their mortality. We have to realize immortality.”

“Easy,” Oksana said, throwing another punch at her pinned opponent. “Nothing to worry about.”

“You say ‘easy’ because you don’t understand it yet. Child.” With that, Dasha tossed Oksana across the clearing. Despite her elderly appearance, as she’d been an old woman when she turned, she had as much strength as any vampire Oksana knew. 

Oksana skidded to a halt in the dirt, but picked herself up quickly. “I’m not a child!”

“You are a baby!” Dasha was above Oksana now, and placed a foot on her chest, forcing her back to the ground. “And you will stay a baby until you get it through your head. You spent your human life learning time is finite. Now, you have to learn eternity.”

“If you hate immortality so much, I can help you out,” Oksana spit. “Say the word and I’ll stake you, any day.”

“Laugh! Very funny! But if you do not learn to manage it you will go mad, the same as a human who fears death.” Dasha stepped harder, grinding Oksana down into the dirt.

Finally Dasha relented and ran off into the night to hunt, as she tended to do, without warning. But she always came back to pester Oksana, eventually.

  
For all that Dasha was insufferable, at least Oksana knew who she was dealing with. Dasha didn’t pretend to be some heroic vampire goddess, the only one who could teach Oksana what she needed to know. She made it quite clear that she allowed Oksana to hang around and learn through observation as long as the arrangement was mutually beneficial, but she bore no strong feelings about her.

But the fact that Dasha had no strong feelings, no agenda, made her a much better teacher than Vladimir, in the end.

For one day, as they traveled through Bulgaria, they reunited after a spell of a few days apart. They met in the dark corner of a restaurant patio at night. But Dasha was not alone; she had a young woman with her. A human.

“Pull out the chair. Make her feel at home,” Dasha barked, and the woman did so.

Oksana stared suspiciously at the chair for a moment before sitting down. “What kind of game is going on here? Didn’t you ever learn not to play with your food?”

“This one’s not food.” After Dasha saw the confusion on Oksana’s face, she sighed and put out her cigarette. “You really know nothing, little baby. You haven’t heard of a vampire’s thrall?”

Oksana answered with a blank stare.

“It’s a human who does your bidding. Not always necessary, but useful once in a while.”

“Where do I get one?”

“Fine. I will show you. But you can only keep one at a time, so…” Dasha turned to the young woman. “Come closer.”

She did. Dasha bit into her.

“So much for not being food.”

Dasha wiped the blood from her mouth. “Let’s go find another.”

Dasha showed Oksana how to make a thrall, as well as plenty of other tricks to getting by as a vampire that Vladimir had held back, or perhaps didn’t know himself. The more Oksana learned about the vampire world, the more she began to suspect that Vladimir was not so high-standing as he acted, and chose to turn two girls from a prison who had no other options because he, too, had no other options for companionship. 

She wondered, just once, if Nadia was still with Vladimir, or if she’d gone through with her own plan to run away. But the thought went out of her head as quickly as it came. There were plenty of new matters to occupy her mind as she traveled around with Dasha, and grew increasingly comfortable as a vampire in her own right.

At one point, as they traveled through France, Dasha taught Oksana one more novelty, that she thought only existed in stories.

“Charming, the bait they lay,” Dasha chuckled. She pointed to a trail of blood sprinkled on the forest floor.

“Who?”

“Hunters.” Dasha picked up a bloodied twig and sniffed at it. “That is how they think of themselves, but they remain prey, to us.”

“We are the real hunters.”

“Indeed.” Dasha examined the trail of blood. “Would you like to have a bit of fun with them?”

Oksana nodded. At Dasha’s direction, she followed the trail. She would play at falling into the hunters’ trap, until they came to check, and then Dasha would ambush them. If the hunters came in a group, as they tended to, then the vampires would feast that night.

“These fools never know what they are doing,” Dasha told Oksana. “So it will take some convincing acting to pretend you’ve really been caught.”

Those are the words that echoed in Oksana’s head, as she gleefully stepped onto the trip wire she could plainly see stretched above the forest floor, right ahead of a large, artful smear of human blood.

Her glee was short lived when, as a result of her melodramatic tumble, her foot landed on a pile of leaves, causing a pair of metal jaws to erupt from the bed of leaves on the ground and snap shut around her right leg.

Oksana let out a loud expletive. Sure, her leg would heal, but she didn’t expect playing the part of victim caught in a trap would involve actual pain. She examined the damage. Blood was starting to leak from her calf where the large metal teeth of the bear trap bit into her flesh. It really hurt. 

_Screw this,_ Oksana thought. Messing with some incompetent humans wasn’t worth the discomfort. She gripped the edges of the trap in her hands and tried to pry it open. It did not budge.

Shit. Maybe these hunters had some idea of what they were doing, after all.

“Dasha,” Oksana said. Not particularly loud, for wherever Dasha was hiding in the underbrush, she’d be able to hear it. “It’s silver. I can’t break it.”

No response. Of course, that bitch was probably laughing at her misery. Not going to swoop in until the hunters showed. 

Oksana pulled at the jaws of the trap again, but it was useless. She yanked at the chain attached to them, but it too was silver and refused to break in her grip. She rifled through the leaves for the end of the chain, but it was anchored into the ground, too deeply to extricate with a simple yank. 

“I don’t like this plan anymore,” Oksana said to the silent woods.

Then, she heard footsteps. Not the heavy _thud-thud_ of a typical careless human, but softer, clearly trying for stealth. At least two pairs of feet, perhaps more.

As they emerged from the underbrush, Oksana saw it was not two, but three hunters. Finally. At least now Dasha would get her ass out here and help. But no sign of her; she was taking her sweet time.

Well, if Dasha wasn’t going to intervene, Oksana had an idea. She recalled her language lessons with Anna, and put on her best sniveling pout. “Please, help me,” she wailed in French. “I was taking my nightly walk, and I got caught, and it hurts!”

One of the hunters, the only woman among the trio, took a step forward, as if to help, but the man next to her stopped her and shook his head.

The woman looked conflicted, and said in French, “How can we be sure that’s a bloodsucker?”

The other man reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object – a hand mirror. He turned around and angled it so it faced Oksana on the ground, though the reflection showed only the leaves and dirt.

“See, Clara?” he said. “Demons will always try to fool you. Good thing it’s caught in the trap. Don’t get close.”

The first man rifled in a bag at his side and pulled out a crossbow. A crossbow! It looked stupid, but Oksana wasn’t sure how effective it’d be. She expected to see some stakes, obviously, but bows? Humans couldn’t have good enough aim to really hit the heart from a distance, could they?

Just as that worry occurred to her, it became real, as the man aimed his bow and squinted at her. Maybe human sight was bad, but he was hardly five meters away, and if Dasha hadn’t jumped in by now…

Oksana muttered several curses on Dasha’s name as she sprung forward, lunging out to the fullest extent that the trap allowed her. Fortunately, it was enough for her to snag the man with the bow by his ankle. She pulled him to the ground, then dragged him closer. Twisted his neck until it snapped. No time for elegance when she was chained to the ground.

The other two cried out and drew their own weapons. Stakes this time – thankfully some things were still predictable. But they danced just out of reach, evidently struggling with the fact that they wouldn’t be able to make a shot at her heart without coming into her range.

Oksana let out the most ferocious growl she could muster. Maybe they’d get scared and run off. But no, the other man had different plans. He ran forward, shouted, “Clara, do it!” and threw his entire body onto Oksana.

Caught off guard by the sheer idiocy of such a move, Oksana was bowled to the ground by the man’s weight. He landed hard on her injured leg, sending a red bolt of pain through her system. “Clara, now! One jab to the heart! You can do it!”

The man apparently decided it was worth it to sacrifice his own life to try to provide an opening. He threw himself onto Oksana even harder, trying to pin her arms and mouth. At the edge of her vision, Oksana noticed Clara gripping her stake nervously, looking for a window. As Oksana sank her teeth into the man and tore out a large chunk of his shoulder flesh, finally, Clara lunged.

Again, no time for elegance. Oksana saw the stake coming for her, she saw her chest open. She did the only thing she could think to do: heaved the man’s body off of her with her full strength. He flew like a poorly designed, non-aerodynamic cannonball and knocked Clara off her feet. Both of them landed in a heap against a thick tree trunk. They did not stir.

Oksana took a few deep breaths, then, crawled back to the spot where the trap first laid. She followed the edge of the chain and began digging up the anchor. Once it was free from the earth, she crawled over to the hunters’ limp bodies. She drank all three of them dry, though she did not relish the meal. It helped, a little, but her leg still ached, and it wouldn’t heal so long as this stupid trap remained.

The trap turned out to be a much trickier problem than she ever could’ve anticipated. For the next two nights, she continued to curse Dasha’s name. Such a snake; Oksana should’ve known she would vanish at the first whiff of real danger. 

Truthfully, she cursed herself the most since the experience only reaffirmed what she already knew. Vampires were the worst, and she was better off on her own.

She cursed and cursed as she made her way through the woods towards the nearest city. It took ages, because she couldn’t run on her bleeding leg. Also, with how slow she moved and how much noise the dragging chain made as it rattled with every step, she would be easy picking for any other hunters or vampires or whatever fresh hell the world had in store for her now. She had to move slowly and stealthily, until finally, she made to the outskirts of a city. 

Oksana skulked around in the night until she found a hardware store. She broke in through a wall in the back – humans only think to alarm the doors and windows – and picked out a wicked looking chainsaw. She let out a laugh of satisfaction as she finally cut the metal jaws to pieces. They hurt almost as much as they came out of her flesh after two days as they did going in, but even as Oksana gritted her teeth through the pain, she felt her body starting to work its healing process. 

Still limping, though only slightly, Oksana took to wandering the streets. She hadn’t paid much attention to where she was going, in her singular pursuit of freedom from the trap, but she now gathered, as she read signs around her, that she was in Paris.

Her last meal was a large one, but it was also two days ago, and she would need more sustenance as her wound finally healed. To that end, she limped down the streets and tried to catch a scent of whomever would be her prey tonight.  
  
Though her stomach growled, none of the humans she found walking in the darkness seemed right; she understood that she ought to eat, but didn’t feel much of an appetite.

Then, her system went into shock as she caught a new scent. A beautiful scent. Faint, but intoxicating. Though it was hardly a whiff, the mere discovery filled her with new energy, spurred her on. She had to find out what the scent was.

She followed it. Sniffing madly. She noticed a few humans on the sidewalk giving her odd stares, looking with concern at a bedraggled, dirty, bleeding young woman sniffing the air… They could wonder all night. Oksana didn’t care.

She followed the trail as best she could, sometimes ending up in a circle, or having to double back when she lost the smell among the hundreds of other stimuli in the city. But eventually, she found the odor getting stronger, and stronger, until she reached the source.

A perfume store.

She pressed her face up against the window. It was dark inside, and outside. She glanced behind her quickly, then smashed the glass. An alarm sounded, but Oksana ignored its pealing and climbed through the jagged hole she created.

Instantly, she was overwhelmed by all the scents around her.

She tore through bottles on the shelf, holding them up to her face one by one until she pinpointed the one she sought. She sprayed it onto her neck. Inhaled. Logically, she knew it must have been made of some combination of earthly ingredients, but it was unlike anything else she’d ever smelled. Impossible to describe. Better than any human blood.

She looked down at the cut-glass bottle in her hand, wrapped in a band of gold lettering practically iridescent in the moonlight, to her eyes. _La Villanelle_.

Oksana took every bottle that was in the store. As many as she could carry. As she breathed in that intoxicating mist, it cleansed her of the stench of her past. She felt like a new woman.

Villanelle.

——III——

It didn’t take Villanelle long to figure out the secret to immortality: hobbies. 

Some had needlepoint. Some had hiking. Villanelle provoked chase from human hunters. When Dasha left her, that first escape from the hunters was the greatest thrill Villanelle felt since her heart beat its last. So, she made a sport of it, and began a world tour, hopping throughout Europe.

She amused herself quite effectively this way for a year. She visited cities she’d always wanted to see and killed humans in each of them. She even ran into Nadia, once, in Greece: no hard feelings, though, this had less to do with forgiving Villanelle and more to do with how smitten she was with her new boyfriend, a vampire named Diego. Villanelle didn’t get what Nadia saw in him, but she nodded and smiled.

Villanelle’s latest target was a group in London, who, charmingly enough, called themselves the “Silver League”. They were quite a determined bunch; they presented themselves to her as she toyed with solo hunters in various other locales. They tried to track her silently, but obviously she caught on. Since they were so interested in her, it kindled her interest in them, and soon, the tracking was a mutual affair.

She found their office in downtown London. She watched them for several days. They came and went on a relatively consistent schedule, working long hours. They even slept there sometimes. It was cute.

Killing them outright would be too simple, and then, Villanelle would have to find another group to play with, and halfway competent hunters were hard to come by. So she teased instead. She left gifts for them, kills that they would come to recognize as her particular handiwork, all over Europe. Now, they were off investigating a scene she threw together in Vienna, and she decided to pop into their headquarters. Were vampire hunters living in style, like she was in her recently acquired London flat?

She walked straight into the office, unimpeded, and started poking around. There were desks full of computers, notepads, and half-empty coffee cups. An impressively large cabinet against one wall, which Villanelle opened to find a large array of stakes, pikes, and bows. A silver crest hung above the doorway, as if they were a holy order of knights and not a half-dozen pencil pushers congratulating themselves at playing pretend heroes.

“Hello?”

Villanelle’s greeting echoed in the open, empty space. No one was there, as expected. Except, no, there was one of them. The older man with the white beard. Villanelle had seen him with them before. He was asleep on a couch in one corner of the office. He snored.

She decided to sit down next to him on the arm of the couch. He remained fast asleep.

Villanelle was growing bored of waiting for his hunter’s instincts to kick in, so she poked him in the eye. He cried out, looked up, and screamed.

“Hi!” she greeted him. “Did you know you snore? Really loud.”

“Who are you?” The man sat up, rubbing his eye. He didn’t have an English accent, like Villanelle had expected. He sounded Russian. 

“It’s so rude of your friends to leave you alone while they go off to Vienna and investigate the gift I left.”

“You…” 

“Why did they leave you behind?”

“It was my turn. We take turns sleeping. Living here.” The man trails off.

“Ahhh,” Villanelle marveled. “That is very clever. Or it would be, if it worked. Your security system needs work.”

In his drowsy confusion, the man finally put the pieces together. He reached down to the couch cushions.

“Looking for this?” She held up the stake that she’d pried from his sleeping hand.

The man leapt off the couch, lunging towards the cabinet for another weapon, but Villanelle grabbed him by the back of his shirt and yanked him to the floor. She pinned him down easily. Super strength handy as always.

The man was at a loss. His eyes shifted, looking for anything else within reach he could use as a weapon.

Villanelle had hoped it’d be more exciting than this, but perhaps this was what she deserved for waiting to drop by when most of the team was gone. Even if she couldn’t get an exciting battle, she could still get a meal. She sank her teeth into his neck.

For some reason, as she lapped up his blood, she recalled Dasha’s lesson to her from over a year ago. How to make a thrall. _“Drink half!” Dasha barked. “You will mess it up the first few times you try. But learn to stop at half, so they must choose to die, or live on as your servant. Then, you make them take the oath.”_

When she’d seen this man there, sleeping, alone. Something in that image stuck. Villanelle had slept alone for many nights lately. 

So Villanelle stopped at half. Or, at least what she thought was half. She licked her lips clean. She laid a hand over the man’s chest, which heaved with every strained breath. 

“Do you…” She frowned down at the man. “Say your name.”

“Konstantin Vasiliev,” he choked out.

“Do you, Konstantin Vasiliev, swear fealty to me, to follow my every order for the rest of your human life?”

His eyes bugged out and his breaths sped up. Clearly, his survival instinct was at war with his honor as a hunter. 

“I recommend you make up your mind quickly,” Villanelle drawled. “Because if you’re going to say no, I can finish you off and it will be a lot less uncomfortable.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I swear loyalty.” By the time the sentence was out, Konstantin’s eyes were already rolling back in his head.

“Good.”

Villanelle tore a piece off Konstantin’s shirt and bound it around his neck to slow the bleeding. She picked him up, slung his body over her back, and carried him back to her apartment.

It occurred to her for the first time, as she carried him, that it might take a human some time to recover from such a wound. Dasha never told her if there was any trick to this part, to get a thrall up to speed quickly. So after dropping his body off at her flat, Villanelle went down to a pharmacy on the corner and nicked some bandages and disinfectant. In a flash of inspiration just before leaving, she grabbed an armful of various packaged food as well. Humans had to eat, she remembered that much.

A few hours later, Villanelle watched as the body on her couch finally stirred.

“Good morning,” she greeted him. “I didn’t know what you like so I got some options for breakfast.” She gestured to the lineup of cereal boxes she laid out on the kitchen counter.

“I am not hungry,” Konstantin groaned.

“Have some.”

The two words hung in the air for a few seconds. Villanelle sat with bated breath for a few seconds, until Konstantin groaned and lifted himself up from the couch. He lumbered over and selected the most boring option – bran flakes, and began making himself a bowl.

“So I guess now that you’re alive and all that, thanks to me, I should lay down some rules.”

Konstantin snorted.

“Excuse me?”

“Thanks to you? You nearly killed me.”

“I could have.” Villanelle wished for a moment, that she did. She still could… one more bite. But that would mean all her effort in cleaning the human up and feeding him would go to waste. _It is like housebreaking a pet,_ she supposed. It would take some trial and error until he learns the rules.

“First things first,” Villanelle said, puffing out her chest commandingly. “No more snoring. That’s an order.”

Konstantin let out another laugh. “That is not an order I can follow.”

“Of course you can. Get one of those little masks. The things that open up your nose. I never want to hear that roaring wood-chipper noise again.”

Konstantin put down his bowl of cereal and began walking to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To get a stupid mask, like you told me!”

“You can do that later.” Villanelle’s lips pulled back into a grin. The power worked. “For now, I have some other rules to set.”

And so she did. It took a few days to get the hang of it, tailoring Konstantin’s behavior to suit her own habits. Setting the right combination of orders so he could feed and care for himself without being told to, but wouldn’t run off. It was tiresome work. Villanelle remembered why she never bothered with pets as a child. 

At least in this case, she got something in return for domesticating Konstantin, more than fetching a newspaper or whatever else a dog could do. For in addition to fetching things, Konstantin could do a few other tricks. He could speak.

“What part of Russia are you from?” Villanelle asked, on the third day of their new relationship. 

“Yaroslavl.” Konstantin asked no follow up. He rarely did. He had a real attitude problem; Villanelle made a note to come up with the right rule to prevent sassy one-word answers in the future.

“I was born in Perm,” Villanelle supplied, as if he had asked. “A bit of moving about, then went to school in Moscow. And prison.”

“A colorful journey, to be sure.” Konstantin paused. “Why don’t you speak Russian?”

“I do.”

“I mean, you speak to me in English, too.” Konstantin gestured vaguely to himself. “Of all the humans in London… I thought the reason you picked me, is so you could speak in the mother tongue.”

“I picked you because you were there. That’s all.”

Upon reflection, it did seem odd to Villanelle that she came so far to try to escape Russia, only to find a companion – not companion, servant – who’d made the same journey.

“Why did you leave Russia?” she asked.

“No one wanted me there.” Konstantin laughed again.

“That’s sad.”

Villanelle flopped down on her bed. She slept more, these days, now that she had the luxury of sending Konstantin off to handle chores for her while she indulged in a little taste of death. Vladimir was right about one thing, in the end, she _did_ understand about sleep now.

She woke several hours later to a touch. Her eyes sprung open. Konstantin, standing over her. Hand caressing the base of her skull.

She could toss him across the room, kill him for daring to touch her. But she wasn’t angry so much as she was curious. Rather than send a fatal blow without a glance, she rolled over and fixed him with a glassy stare. His poor, weak heart began to race as he registered her observation.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“There was a fly. As you slept.”

Villanelle sat up on the bed. Konstantin stare back at her, his eyes bugging like they always did when he was on edge. 

“I thought of another rule.”

“What is it?”

“Whenever I go, or you. When we part. You must always say goodbye.”

“Alright,” he grumbled.

“But not just ‘bye’ on autopilot,” Villanelle adds. “Make it nice. Make it… ‘I love you’.”

Konstantin said nothing, but retreated to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. “Now that you are awake, is there anything else you need?”

“No.” Villanelle said. She watched him drain a very small cup of water and try to regain his dignity. “No, I think that’s all for now.”

—— _coda_ ——

Villanelle thrived.

She made her own forever.

She hardly ever thought of Nadia, or Anna, or Dasha… She was an entirely new creature, of her own creation – no one else’s. She did what she liked. She frustrated hunters. She built her own comfort with her thrall.

It was all going so well, in fact, that it was a bit too easy. The bunch of hunters she’d been taunting for months were having such trouble keeping on her trail across Europe, that she’d gotten lazy to try to let them catch up. She left three gifts for them right here in London, of which the most recent was her most dangerous attempt yet.

She noticed a tiny drop of blood on her watch, wiped it off with her thumb, then popped her thumb in her mouth. The blood must’ve splattered just a bit as she drained the man in the gallery before dawn. Now that the sun had risen, she waited in the museum café until the coast was clear.

Hopefully she’d get a nice view of the hunters when they showed up to investigate. They’d pull their hair out over this one, but they’d never catch her.

Villanelle leaned forward over her tea and took a deep whiff. She missed food and drink. While her body would no longer digest human food, she could still enjoy the scents, which _almost_ satisfied the urge.

But as she breathed in, she smelled something besides her tea.

Well, obviously, she smelled about a hundred different things – the coffee brewing in the café, the light chemical smell of industrial refrigerator exhaust, the spray of _La Villanelle_ she applied every day, and of course, the dozens of humans around her.

But one scent seemed to float above the rest, and once Villanelle keyed into it, it was all she could focus on. It was a person. It was blood, but it was… different. Delicious. Even better than _La Villanelle_. Better than Anna… 

It could be any of the humans in the room. There was no way to be sure, with this much of a crowd, no way to pick out which body was the source, especially not without attracting attention. The hunters might show up any minute. Villanelle kept her head low, as she sunbeams from the nearby window shifted. She leaned back in her chair. She inhaled again.

And then, she wasn’t sure which of her senses made her aware – perhaps she heard the shifting fabrics, though with so much other background noise it was nearly subconscious – but she became aware that someone was looking at her.

She lifted her head and stares down the woman across the room. She was an Asian woman, looked perhaps in her forties, but good for her age. Dark, thick curls spilled across her shoulders, over her trenchcoat. She stared right into Villanelle’s eyes.

Though there was no way of being sure, with so many bodies in the room, Villanelle knew that woman was the one.

But what to do about it? Before Villanelle could decide how to approach, the woman beat her to action.

The woman raised her phone. She was trying to take a picture.

She knew something, too. She was here for Villanelle. 

Villanelle smiled for the picture. Even if it was only pretend, she wanted to look her best. 

Then she stood up to introduce herself.

**Author's Note:**

> and there's Thirst! aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh
> 
> hope you guys liked this, it began as 'what if I wrote something with young vamps Nadia and Oksana' and then became oh wait I can fill in some of the vague impications I put in Thirst and Stakes and wait I can maybe also put some teasers for part three??? teehee 
> 
> anyways it came out longer than i expected also I am not sure why after several months of training myself to write in present tense I decided to go for past so I'm sure I shall find mistakes later but uh. hope this scratches that vampire itch until I can release the final arc.
> 
> you can find me on [tumblr](https://imunbreakabledude.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/not_breakable) at least some of the time xo


End file.
